


Blight of my Life

by crowry, im cat (whiskerbeast)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-17
Updated: 2012-07-17
Packaged: 2017-11-10 04:54:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/462407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowry/pseuds/crowry, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskerbeast/pseuds/im%20cat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shadow Cadet Karkat Vantas abandons his squadron on their way to liberate Earth 4 in order to save his internet friend from certain, if not imminent, death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blight of my Life

**CG: HEY  
CG: I'M GOING TO BE IN THE AREA.**  
 **EB: what, really?**  
 **CG: NO.  
CG: I JUST SAID THAT SO YOU WOULD THINK I WAS, AND I COULD BE A SHITTY LIAR WHO GETS HIS FRIEND'S HOPES UP AND THEN SCREWS THEM RIGHT INTO THE FILIAL PAIL.  
CG: YES, REALLY. YOU ARE AN EMBARRASSMENT.**  
 **EB: karkat shut up! i get it!  
EB: are you trying to get my numbers? because i'm not going to give them to you. we've been over this. you're just trying to get into my shorts.**  
 **CG: ...  
CG: JUST GIVE ME YOUR NUMBERS.**  
 **EB: ok.**  
  
Studying the satellite around the edge of Earth, you note that it's sort of a dump--out-dated and half unlit--even in comparison to the boring grey landscape of the human empire. The captain makes a call for hands to the bridge, and you should be going--your only real skills are shouting at people and avoiding immediate danger. That, and getting into trouble, which is what you're about to do. Terezi is next to you in full uniform, frowning around a mouthful of fangs and bracing herself against the wall in the slight sway before the ship re-gravitizes.  
  
"Don't fuck this up," she says.  
  
"The point is to fuck things up," you tell her. "That is, in fact, what I am planning on doing."  
  
"You know what I mean."  
  
You do. The rest of your squadron is on its way to back up twelve hundred and fifty-eight other squadrons already searching for the Condescension, to take her out and restore Earth 4 to its relative former glory. You, however, are headed for Satellite 5, because somewhere on the lumpy, rotating tin can around the corner is a kid you have been wanting to meet in person for the last six perigees.  
  
You are going to break him free.  
  
Terezi is the one who orchestrates you getting off the squadron ship, which involves her yelling at a bunch of lower-ranking officers and you being treated like a civilian. This is pretty par for the course on The Shadow; they don't even blink, just let her shove you past them into a pod and slam the door with her foot. You're sure you'll see her again eventually; that's just how serendipity works, even ashen.  
  
Getting onto the right floor once you're on Satellite 5 is a bigger ordeal than getting clearance to land a ship was. It's an under class dinghy of a shuttle and you have to use your fake rank ID for the elevators.  
  
When you get there it's a shit dump: greasy steam pours from chow joints and everything is bathed in sick yellow lighting; vendors shout from dark corners in all human languages and some emperial ones. The whole place has the same tech bar feel as basic training dives and you are so tense Terezi could use you to pick her teeth. There's screen light and smoke light and the orange of fire flashing up on stoves, and wherever there's a space to stick adverts to the walls, adverts have been stuck, including over address plaques.  
  
You're disheartened when you see the sign for John's shop, or at least something that looks close enough because your helmet's translation matrix is broken, and you've always been shit at other alphabets. The shelves of plants in the dim, flickery light are a good enough hint, though you hadn't counted on the smell of rot suffusing the place. You ignore it, and shoulder your way past an overgrown yucca, searching the haphazard potted jungle of scraggly, under-sunned plants for someone that looks like a John.  
  
Specifically you're looking for someone who looks like they could waste five hours of your life telling you about a two hour film that you could just watch instead of listening to poorly argued thematic deconstruction. He should also look like someone who would miss the point of the film, laugh, and then start talking about marshmallow burgers and how he put a cube of vomit in someone's soda the other day and they didn't notice.  
  
You are, to be frank, not looking for a handsome man. Which is probably just as well because when you shove one last squeaky cart of gourds aside with your hip, there is no handsome man. He has a large forehead and a pinched look on his face, like someone stabbed him between the eyes with a fork, and he's hunched in concentration over a hand-held game.  
  
"Whoa, sorry," he says when you clear your throat, fumbling the game so it drops on the pocked metal floor. "Fuck. Can I help you?"  
  
"I'm looking for a rare species," you say, "of moron."  
  
In your dreams, it goes like this: John's face breaks into a fond smile around his laughter. You are taller than him, and he steps around a clean counter to give you a hug (and what he believes to be a discreet kiss on the neck). Things usually progress from there into pornographic fantasy or romantic tropes generally found in the likes of So Two Cavalreapers Find Themselves Alone In Enemy Territory And Discuss Their Personal Lives and Probably Consummate A Red Quadrant Who Knows Just Watch The Fucking Movie.  
  
You are really stupid for expecting anything other than what actually happens, which is this: John gapes at you for a minute before standing and getting a face full of fish-palm fronds. He laughs that off and stumbles into you full-force, driving home the depressing facts: like everyone else in your entire acquaintance, he is taller than you. At least you are totally more ripped, you tell yourself, but you're already closing your arms around his waist and wincing as his jaw drags light across the tip of your horns.  
  
"Dude," he says. "Karkat, wow, I didn't think you were serious."  
  
"I'm always serious," you tell the collar of his musty tee-shirt. "I am serious like fucking liver failure, John."  
  


  
  
There's an awkward lull in everything: he is snuggling the admittedly very soft top of your head, and your face is pressed uncomfortably into his collarbone. You clear your throat and he laughs--a half second of additional pressure and he's gone, backstepping to his chair and scratching his shoulder.  
  
"So, what's up?" he says. "What brings you to Wholesome Vegetables? I thought you were like an intergalactic justice crusader or something."  
  
"I am. Or I was, until I snuck away from the "intergalactic justice crusaders" to meet my internet friend."  
  
John stares at you some more. "Whoa," he says. "Uh, Karkat, I hope you're joking, because that's really serious."  
  
What's really serious is, John Egbert is a blight on your life. You yourself are also a blight on your life, but you are used to yourself. You're used to fucking up before you even try and having to spend years upon years fixing mistakes you didn't know you were making. You're used to being a burden on all of your friends and occasionally getting them killed, and you are used to dodging the law, because your life is illegal. Your happiness is probably also illegal, which brings you back to John.  
  
John Egbert in the only person in all of fossilizedtomatoes.com's user-base, possibly in all of time and space, to think it is reasonable to defend the objective value of the entirety of the Ghostbusters franchise, without exception, including the Ghostbusters XIV MMORPG 2, which even its creators admitted was awful. They apologized for creating it. You encountered him nearly three sweeps ago arguing with half of fossilizedtomatoes' user-base in defense of several human actors of questionable talent.  
  
There was only so long you could argue with him publicly, so for two sweeps you have been entertaining frequent "debate," if you can call it that, regarding popular film and its criticisms. It's only been in the past half sweep or so that the conversations went from being methodic stress relief to actually enjoyable, if depressing.  
  
You escaped prosecution on Alternia with the help of your friends and the life of your moirail and every shred of blessing his messiahs felt inclined to spare you. You are old, stupid, and endlessly hatefully grateful.  
  
John Egbert doesn't even know how much trouble you have been through, and he doesn't know how much danger you are about to put him in, but he trusts you. At least, you are pretty sure he does. You're pretty sure you're in love with him, actually, but for that to mean anything it would probably be a good idea to get him off this orbiting political time bomb.  
  
"John, I wasn't kidding when I said I am always serious."  
  
"Okay, well," he starts, and if this isn't the start of one of his emotional dodges you are troll Tom Cruise's number one fan. You have heard him use that phrase so many times over Grype, hearing it now, seeing his shrug and grimace, floods you half with affection and half with rage.  
  
You realize you have probably gone about this all wrong, as usual.  
  
"Do you trust me?" you ask. "I know it's a serious question just, please, humor me. Do you fucking trust me."  
  
He stalls, obviously; stoops down to pick up his game, picks at the cracked display with a dirty fingernail, shoots a few considering looks at you. "Yeah," he says finally. He opens his mouth to add more and stops, shrugs, digs his hands deep into his pockets.  
  
"Okay." You step forward and grab him by the shoulders. "Listen carefully to what I am about to tell you."  
  
He allows you to drag his head down, level to your mouth, and as you tell him--about the danger you would like to drag him through, about his freedom and your freedom and that the only way out of Satellite 5 is through what you expect is probably a platoon of laser-artillerist highbloods. His hands curl into the fabric at your waist, and you think of every night you called him, sitting in your underclothes in your cocoon and listening to him laugh over the static-distorted connection and call all your favorite movies crap, how you have returned the favor and how you spend so much time writing instant message essays to him about everything that happens in your life.  
  
"Karkat, shut up," he says, stopping you mid-sentence. You realize you have been philosophizing on the descent of the human race and also the undeserved power of the Alternian Empire. You realize, more specifically, that you have been whispering this into his ear, and you flush so deeply you feel burned by it.  
  
To drive the nail in the coffin: he laughs at you.  
  
"You are so dumb," he says. "I don't need a history lesson, Karkat, or like, a breakdown of your politics."  
  
"Okay," you say. John has a bad habit of obfuscating his point when the point is something you're anxious about.  
  
"Okay," he says, and he leans forward and kisses you toothily, his overbite clanking into yours, the lens of his glasses pressed against the bridge of your nose. "I'm ready to take this chance."  
  
You smile. "Let's do this."  
  


*

  
  
Spoilers: John suffers two low-powered laser shots to the side; you, three to the left arm. You make it back to your ship in time to see floor five hundred literally explode.  
  
Additional spoilers: In the following perigee, you reunite with Terezi, make new friends, and join the Earth resistance. John asks you to human date him for real, like not like bro dating, meatspace romance dating, where you hold hands and sleep in the same hammock (this part fails) or recuperacoon (this also fails) and drink from the same bottles.  
  
The biggest spoiler of all: despite often living in tents in the dirty decaying concrete bowels of a monstrous planet colonized by your lifelong prosecutor, despite your mistakes and your losses and John's ironic alienation, his worry and his reluctance, you are both really, exceptionally happy.


End file.
